


Enemy

by Halequinne



Series: The Kick Start Chronicles [2]
Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alternate Universe - Killjoys, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-06
Updated: 2011-12-06
Packaged: 2017-10-27 23:43:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/301372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Halequinne/pseuds/Halequinne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"We weren’t right. We weren’t just. We weren’t even vigilantes... But that was the payment for my freedom."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Enemy

I woke up with a start, bolting upright on the hard floor of the old bar.

 _The fuck was that?_

The body next to me groaned and shuffled in his sleep. Poison’s watch was next and he didn’t need to be woken early if it was all in my head. But I scrambled up quickly, hauling my clothing back on gratefully against the cold night air. It cut at me as soon as I was out of range of the warm body at my side. After retrieving his jacket and throwing it gently over him, I walked to the window at the side of the building as my right hand twitched over the purple-painted ray gun at my thigh, the holster clasp already released from the moment the leather straps were attached to me again.

It held a lot of comfort, that gun. It was relatively new to me, but was emblazoned with identical markings to the other versions I’d had: the same purple as my mask – brighter than my scarf – with twin, black-outlined white racing stripes that angled back from the trigger, then sharply changing direction and running all the way to the business end of the barrel.

My gun was Kick Start too.

Outside the window I could see nothing. No movement in the air, not even a blast of wind through the dust. It was the silence that honestly scared me. If you could hear them, you knew where they were – from which direction they would be coming at you. In the silence they were hidden. No news is _never_ good news in the Zones.

So I checked every other window to the outside world, but the only thing I saw move was Ghoul, ray gun out, kicking at the dirt while his eyes prowled the horizon.

I took the exit door behind the bar, the one with a half collapsed sign with the words _To Roof_ scrawled in dark red script. I hoped it was Jet doing rooftop lookout, not Kobra.

*

It was seven weeks ago that the Killjoys found me, nearly ghosted and implanted with Korse’s tracking chip, and Kobra still hated me. I have no idea why.

 _Probably just a trust thing._

It seemed to get worse in the past week or so. He went from trying to pretend I wasn’t there as much as possible, to actively being rude to me. The only correlation with that timing was that it was about the same time Poison had propositioned me.

The idea of that whole thing made me laugh, though. I wondered, if we had been in old California, would Poison have asked me out?

 _Well I wouldn’t be calling him Poison for one thing._

But probably not anyway. I just happened to be a girl in his immediate vicinity – someone with whom he could relieve the tension and know I wouldn’t turn my gun on him mid-thrust. That and the fact that I said yes when he asked. Even though I was surprised at the time. I’d thought it might be Ghoul who asked first since we got along the most. That was probably for the best though, as there was no time for love in the Zones, not when something like that could be used against you in the worst possible ways. This was the first night Poison and I had even stayed in each other’s proximity afterwards, and that was more an accident than anything else; we’d fallen asleep before managing to dress ourselves and crawl to opposite corners.

 _It was stupid. If Dracs showed up we would be dead in the time it took to reclothe._

At the top of the stairs to the roof, the door creaked and when I peered into the darkness, I saw the barrel of a blue ray gun pointed at my face.

“You shouldn’t do that,” Jet stated calmly, lowering his weapon. “You’ll get yourself killed.”

I smirked. “Did you want me to knock?”

He smiled back and patted the edge of the roof next to where he was sitting.

“So what was the noise?” I finally would get an answer to why I was awake and not curled dangerously close to a stark naked Party Poison. “Or did I imagine it?”

He laughed and shook his head. “Kobra kicked a bottle over in his sleep. I was surprised Poison didn’t wake, actually… You must have really worn him out.” His sideways glance was enough to make me blush in the darkness. Luckily enough, side comments were as far as the conversation about our relationship – if it could even be called that – ever got. We were too scared of getting attached to each other, or the possibility of any Dracs finding out.

But the sound of Kobra’s name brought more pressing concerns back to my mind.

“Hey Jet,” I began wearily. “Why does Kobra hate me so much? Especially in the last week…”

Jet looked at me with wide eyes. “You don’t know?”

 _Oh, hello?_

I shook my head, eyes wide and urging him to spill what he knew that I didn’t.

“I shouldn’t really tell you this, but Poison is Kobra Kid’s big brother.”

 _Shit on a stick._ I blinked a few times as though it would clear my head. “Who said what now? _Brothers_? Are you serious? How do the Dracs not know?”

“They do know. You’ve seen the posters for us right?” I nodded. “Well they’re mainly after Poison, being the leader and all, but the bounty for information on Kobra is just as high. They know if they capture him, Poison will run in guns blazing. Literally.”

*

 _Mind. Blown._

It was a long time before I spoke again, my brain running in circles while I tried to keep out the thoughts of my past, but eventually my throat managed to form words again. Words that were not as painful to say as they could have been. “Well,” I croaked. “That explains a few things.”

Jet laughed. A sight and sound not often seen nor heard. It was a breathy sound, and his wide lips curved up to reveal his top row of teeth. It made me smile back.

“I imagine it would, Kick. And Kobra doesn’t hate you…”

I raised an eyebrow that he couldn’t see in the darkness, but I knew he could feel it.

“Ok maybe a little. But it’s just his defences kicking in. We… We nearly lost Poison about a year ago, and that’s when Kobra started getting more distant. He actually used to smile, you know?”

“Surely not?”

That laugh again. “Yeah. He was a good kid before all this,” he gestured around him. “The Zones broke all that away from him until he became that shell you see now.”

“You knew him before?”

“Yeah. All four of us did, actually. We played music together.”

 _Music. One of the first things to go in Better Living society. No wonder they were outlaws._

There was a creak at the door I’d come through and my eyes snapped up, as did my ray gun. Purple and blue, side by side, our best hope of defending ourselves if they came.

But it was a flash of red that appeared in the doorway, not the monochromatic getup of the Draculoids.

“We need a system for this,” I stated, lowering my weapon and seeing Jet do the same as Poison stepped out into the open air. “Before we kill each other.”

Poison’s face was hard as he approached us. He gave a quick nod to Jet – who returned it and turned his gaze back out to the horizon after catching Ghoul’s eye for a moment – then pushed his red locks away from his face and turned his eyes on me, beckoning to me. Once we were on the far side of the roof, he took hold of my wrist, pulling me around to face him. Those eyes I could only see as black in the darkness burned into me.

“That can’t _ever_ happen again.”

I gulped.

His voice was low and harsh – back to being Poison the leader; Poison the Killjoy. “You should have woken me as soon as you noticed. We can’t be anything less than ready for an attack at all times.”

The dark lashes fell over his eyes and his face turned to the side. “I can’t get attached to you,” he whispered, so low I could barely hear. He was Poison the man with the soft hands and lips again for a moment. Just a moment.

 _Meaning he has? Or even just getting there?_

“I can’t _spend_ the fucking _night_ with you. We’re…” He shook his head with a half laughed sigh. “ _We’re_ not supposed to be a _we_.”

“We can’t be.” I whispered back, just as quietly, but making it crystal clear for him.

I shuffled forward slightly, the tips of my fingers snaking under the lining of his jacket and tee shirt, letting my ring and pinkie fingers slide under the waistband of his worn grey jeans. I felt the tiny hairs there stand up at the cold and watched as a shiver ran through him and his eyes snapped back to mine. My palm pressed against his hip and my left hand took his right, placing it square on my jacket where it covered my left breast.

“This is what we are Poison,” I left his hand there and pressed mine to his gun, pushing it into his leg. “This, and having one more person to watch our backs.”

The twitching in his fingers gave away his new intentions and, although my eyes had adjusted to the dark, I didn’t need to see his eyes to know how he was suddenly looking at me.

“Don’t love me.” I added simply in a low monotone.

“I don’t.”

“Good.”

His eyes showed his inner battle as though on the big screen before he gave in and squeezed slightly, pushing me forcefully back into the wall next to the door, pinning me there with his body.

“Cause if you did,” I muttered, watching my hand as it squeezed back at his hip. “I might just have to shoot you and save myself.”

My eyes flicked up to his face and I smirked. His eyes continued to burn into mine, but his mouth was open slightly and his breathing heavy with lust as his hips pressed down against my own.

*

Our hands were closer to each other’s guns when it happened.

Still pressed against the wall, Poison’s mouth on my neck, I saw it. The glowing glint of moonlight reflecting off the white Draculoid masks. Lots of them. And they were a lot closer than they should have been able to get without detection by Ghoul and Jet.

Poison’s yellow ray gun was in my hand – slightly uncomfortable in my left hand – before I had time to say anything. I just shot.

And down went a Drac. Just dropped from their ranks, lifeless in the dust. Ghosted.

 _I just killed someone…_

Before my brain could process anything, the redhead had caught on, taken my gun, and shot down two more Dracs. But that barely made a dent in the number we were up against.

 _Actually taken someone’s life…_

Drac or no, there was a person behind that mask.

I’d shot my gun many times in self-defence – hell, not always in self-defence – but only ever to injure.

If there wasn’t an extermination poster made for me already, there would be when this got back to BL/ind. And the image swam through my head: my face, in black and white, a thick red X slashed through the middle, and EXTERMINATE blocked over my eyes.

“Shoot, Kick!” Poison screamed – and I don’t think it was the first time since my mental crisis he did so – as he pulled my mask over my eyes and pried his own gun from my fingers, replacing it with my own in my right hand and shaking me furiously. “Kick Start!? For fuck’s sake! You’re a perfect shot, now _do something_!”

My fingers wouldn’t grasp around the trigger, nor was I able to raise my left hand again to slide the primer.

Three more Dracs dropped, the shots coming from all different directions: one behind me, and two from the ground on opposite sides of the bar. Jet, Ghoul and Kobra. And then another from Poison.

Who was still yelling at me, his yellow mask now covering his face.

 _People under the masks…_

“GET DOWN!”

I think it was Jet that yelled, but I was thrown to the surface of the roof with half a body over me before I could think.  
A hand grabbed hold of my face. Poison’s.

“Kick,” He began in the most calm and firm tone he could muster in the current situation as his eyes burned me again and his other hand kept firing down into the desert. “We don’t have time for this. You can freak out later. Right now, you need to point that gun and fire at as many Dracs as you can. Kill, injure, I don’t care. Just make them fall or we all die.”

I blinked.

 _We. All. Die._

He nodded once, slowly, questioningly.

 _Die._

“Make them fall…” I said slowly.

He nodded again. “Make them fall, Kick.”

Jerking my eyes to the coming onslaught, I raised my weapon – no longer with a shake in my fingers or mind – and aimed.  
 _Arm wounds won’t stop them._

A faint cry as another Drac fell, clutching his – or her – leg, while several around him fell without a sound.

“Good, Kick.” Jet’s voice sounded in my ear and the weight on me was removed.

He was about to speak again when Kobra’s voice could be heard from the bar door.

“Get to the car! We can’t win this!”

But I couldn’t move. My instructions were to keep shooting – I’d felled two more since regaining my semi-psychotic composure – and I couldn’t process any more information in that state of mind.

Another fell.

They kept falling, but there were so many. And the ones I couldn’t kill kept shooting from the ground, refusing to abandon their mission.

 _Like me…_

I would let that thought haunt me later.

There was movement at my sides. The blast of coloured lasers kept flying passed my ears, but from angles that changed continuously.

They kept falling.

“Move it!” Jet yelled down at me. But I was frantic and manic, shooting down into the swarm; my aim was good and I knew I could be of good use to them as long as I kept firing.

However, the two men now above me had other plans. They had given up on reasoning with and yelling at me and hauled me up, dragging me towards the door giving us access back into the bar.

It was only when we reached the bottom of the stairs and I had shot through the walls more than once that Poison took the opportunity to give me a fierce shake.

“Kick! For fucks sake!” The back of his leather-clad hand smacked across my face.

That made me twitch back to reality – or rather, the being-closed-in-on-by-Dracs part of reality.

“What?” I asked, not able to remember at all what the two men had said to me.

“Run to the car.”

“Shoot any Dracs that get in your way.” Jet added as he peered out the window quickly, assessing our exact situation.

 _Run. Shoot._

I nodded. “Can do.”

Poison couldn’t hold back the relief that washed over his face in that instant. I could tell he and Jet had shared a silent conversation about my sanity as they dragged me down the stairs.

*

There was a cry as the last person – Ghoul – leapt into the Trans Am.

“Go!” Kobra yelled to Poison as soon as all limbs were inside, the visor of his helmet pushed down so _GOOD LUCK_ was splashed across his face. “Drive!”

As soon as we were moving, Kobra stood in his seat, leaning out the window and firing behind us. I was in my usual spot, on my knees in the middle, shooting back out the broken window. To my right, Jet stood like Kobra, no mask however, just aviator sunglasses over his eyes even in the dim light of dawn. But even with his eyes shaded, I could see that he kept throwing worried glances past me…

Ghoul wasn’t standing. He still held his ray gun out the window, firing quickly, but his tattooed skin was paler than usual and even with his face completely hidden behind his Frankenstein mask, I could tell something was wrong.

It would have to wait. There were still Dracs in range, and they wouldn’t stop chasing ‘til the Killjoys were well out of sight. So the Killjoys would be on guard until then too.

“This… Is what fucking hap…pens when… We get too close… To the city!” Kobra yelled at Poison between shots.

 _His brother…_

I scolded myself instantly for letting my thoughts trail back to my life before the Killjoys at such a time. We were nearly out of range, yes, but then Ghoul needed me.

Several more Dracs fell from view while several more laser blasts hit the car, more than one passing my face far closer than I was comfortable with.

It’s not like we often come out of a clap without a scratch or anything like that, we were pretty good – hence why we were all still alive – but this was different. I could feel my arm burning where I’d been clipped, from Jet’s direction I could smell burned leather and hair, Poison had made a small yelp while he drove – earning an unanticipated wince from my own chapped lips – but no one had time to assess any of us yet. Kobra seemed okay – he _was_ damn fast. And God knows what Ghoul was going through right now; every time I glanced over to him he seemed lower in his chair, his grip weaker on his gun.

 _We have to survive._

“We’re away,” Jet breathed loudly beside me.

I flipped the barrel of my gun upwards, relaxing a little, but still checking for any sign of movement behind the cloud of dust that swirled in our wake.

“We’re away,” I agreed, slowly tucking my weapon into its holster.

That was when I felt a body slump against me.

“Ghoul!?” Jet and I cried out at the same time, twisting in the small space to see what was wrong.

“What is it?” Poison called back while Kobra craned his neck around towards us from his now seated position.

“I…” But I didn’t know how to continue, other than with “I don’t know…”

Hands were grabbing at my shoulders, pushing me sideways: Jet, while he muttered frantically under his breath.

“Is he still alive?” Poison asked sternly, eyes still straight ahead.

“Ahh…” Still not knowing how to answer him, I stuttered again until I found myself thrown into the car door, behind the driver, my shoulder pressed solidly into the driver’s seat.

Jet climbed over me, and it suddenly occurred to me that this was why he had been grabbing me. He was the closest thing we had to a medic and that was only because he was the least squeamish about digging into someone he was close to.

“For fucks sake is he still alive!?” Poison screamed back, but Jet’s fingertips were already at his pulse point and I saw his shoulders lower slightly.

“He’s alive.”

There was silence in the car as we all breathed a communal sigh of relief.

It was the silence that, not only let my thoughts crawl back into my head and begin to break through my calm, but it let us all hear the almost clattering coming from under the hood.

“She’ll hold…” Poison muttered, and I saw his fingers caress the wheel, not unlike the way he had touched me at times.

It was another moment before Kobra spoke, “How many do you think there were?”

“I don’t know…” Poison sounded as though he was working out an estimation in his mind.

 _A hell of a lot less now._

Like the flash of a gun, the numbness that had filled my head was gone. My hands began to shake.

“I… You… _You…_ ” No one turned to look at me, all too caught up in their own dilemmas.

 _Jesus Christ what have we done?_ “They… People…” I couldn’t make my words form sentences; those connections in my brain had shut off. “Real people… Killed… We… Oh God…”

My head shook side to side frantically, denying what I had seen. And _done_.

But the loud snap – or rather _crack_ – had all our heads suddenly snapping up to the hood of the car, even with my thoughts so far away; back at the bar. The small amount of Poison’s skin that I could see in that instant paled considerably.

“We’re still moving.” He stated clearly, though it sounded more like he was trying to reassure himself as much as any of us.

 _He’s a murderer._

I froze.

 _They all are._

My eyes shifted from each man to the next, fearful, as though I would be next on their hit-list. Just because they hadn’t killed me yet didn’t mean it wasn’t on the cards.

 _I’m a murderer too._

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.” I could hear my voice, but as though from outside of my head. Could hear it like the Killjoys around me could now hear it.

“What?” Kobra sneered, as though my panic was just a cry for attention to absent parents. I locked eyes with him; I felt like a startled animal. I didn’t avert my gaze for a moment when Poison began to swear and Kobra turned to him.

I could hear the hissing though, and see the steam rising around the clawed legs of the black widow. I could feel the car stop.

 _Stuck here with them._

Poison threw open the door to climb out, then turned and slammed his gloved hands against the roof.

Those gloves had pulled me from death not so long ago, but now all I saw was that gun in his hands.

I heard him speak, but it took my brain a long time to figure out what words passed his lips. It was in the dead of the night while I tried to take my mind off my freezing surroundings when I heard the words again in my mind.

“Kick, you’re up. We’re so close.”

But at that moment I was looking at Ghoul, with Jet hunched over him, and wondering if this was justice.

The seat in front of me snapped forward and I tumbled into the dust at Poison’s feet.

“You can fix anything in a car. C’mon. Get up.” He held out his hand.

 _So much blood on it._

“No.”

“What?”

I shook my head again as I scrambled defensively to my feet, backing away from the car full of Killjoys, eyes flickering between each of them.

“Um, what the hell?”

My eyes stopped on Poison and stared. I was frightened of him. I was frightened of what they had turned me into. “You… All those people…”

The redhead did a double take, confused for a moment.

“Dracs, Kick. They were Dracs,” he said while taking a few steps towards me. But I just scrambled back further, widening the distance between us.

“Exactly! They were just doing their job!” It was an old excuse, I know, been used for as long as there had been war, but in that moment, those people we killed all had families back in the city. Everyone knew someone and I’d ruined that someone’s life.

“They’re not like the S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W units! They’re not the police! All you are to the Dracs is a wad of cash or food stamps or whatever the reward is!” He paused, exasperated, like he was trying to talk sense into a stubborn child. “We can’t stay here. Come back, fix the car and we’ll sort this out when we get there.”

But I’d started denying him as soon as he had mentioned the – also masked, though not like the Draculoids – police units of the inner city.

I couldn’t stay with them. I flicked a glance over my shoulder at the nothingness of the desert.

I knew he could see the panic in my eyes. And I could see the path of his thoughts – I wasn’t giving him much of a choice though.

“We’ll… We’ll leave, Kick. We can’t stay, car or no, we cannot stay.”

I turned tail and ran.

*

Noise carries in the desert on quiet days like this. That’s the only reason I heard the yelling behind me.

“Kick! We don’t have time for this now! We’ll go!”

It sounded like a plea, almost.

 _Almost. He’d never sink so low._

Mostly just a warning. A last chance to return that I knew the other two would not have given.

I didn’t pay attention to the wisps of conversation I heard between the brothers. Only Jet’s voice managed to reach me clearly.

“Ghoul’s dying! We have to move him now!”

I heard doors slamming, but the voices had quietened. They were gone.

*

It was a long time that I was lost in my own thoughts, trying to find a way to redeem myself, before I remembered the heat.

 _How could I forget the heat?_

The sun blasted down on me, it was well into the afternoon, but would still be a couple more hours before the sun went down and the chill set in.

My knees crashed to the ground, my hands following an instant after. Four small dots of sand darkened in my view. Tears. I wiped my face and licked my fingers, not wanting to waste any more water than I had already. _Water…_

Oh God… I was a goner out here by myself. Poison had said we were close, but I had no idea as to the whereabouts of which he was talking. He never told us things like that. Well, not me at least. But I knew that was just as a safety precaution; the less people that knew our location and destination, the longer we stayed alive.

 _Why, hello logic. Welcome back to the playing field._

It’s amazing how, when alone in the desert with not a great deal of hope of surviving the next night or so, the panic fades and the mind clears itself.

Out here, alone, I would die. Plain and simple.

The Killjoys had saved me on numerous occasions. They didn’t want me dead.

Those Draculoids, on the other hand, did. Unequivocally.

It was them or me.

We weren’t right. We weren’t just. We weren’t even vigilantes. But we’re free. And I could handle being the antagonist in this world if that was the payment for my freedom.

 _Fuck._

I had one chance: the faint hope that they would return for the car within the next day or so.

My mask dangled uselessly around my neck, and I pulled it up angrily, unable to believe my own stupidity at roaming the Zones unmasked. Who knows who might have seen me. And the wind had picked up a little, blowing the dust into my face even as I adjusted my scarf.

 _Right, Kick Start_ – since I was finally acting like Kick Start again – _move it._

I looked up to the placement of the sun in the sky once more, not certain how long I’d been walking for, but fairly certain it would be dark by the time I made it back to the Trans Am, even if I left right then and there. Which I did. Scolding myself for my idiocy the entire way.

*

I was right.

Oh shit was I right.

My body was trembling with the cold almost as soon as the beat up muscle car was more than a pinprick in my vision.

 _Luckily I’d walked in a straight line._

Stumbling up onto the dust-covered road, exhausted, I decided taking a look at the damage could wait until morning. Right then it was time to sleep.

There were no bottles of water strewn on the floor. That was what I first noticed when I dived head first into the backseat via the hole where maybe a window once was.

If they didn’t come back soon, I wouldn’t last long. Probably no more than two nights, judging by how dry my throat, mouth, and insides already felt. Two nights at best.

And that’s only if the temperature didn’t get me first during the nights. I’d slept in the Trans Am before, obviously, but never by myself. We used to all huddle in the back together for warmth. Alone, the worn leather was cold and hard and the wind felt like it was ripping through me even once I had curled down onto the floor, my black and silver jacket done up as far as it would go.

“Kick, you really are a stupid motherfucker, you know that?” I muttered to myself bitterly.

The world grew darker and darker and I grew colder and colder as the minutes passed. Minutes, not hours. The hours would take much longer than they usually did if I didn’t get to sleep soon. Then again, while I was awake I knew I was alive; couldn’t say the same about being unconscious.

No matter how hard I clenched my jaw, my teeth still managed to chatter loudly in my mouth. My lips were dry and I could feel them cracking painfully. I tried to touch them, but that only made me more aware of the shaking in my hands. And that, in turn, lead to a full body assessment that only resulted in my realization than my toes and half way up my feet were numb, as were the tips of my fingers and my nose. By this point I was wishing my backside and shoulders were numb against the hard inner shell of the Trans Am.

My insides felt cold. My stomach and lungs; as though they were lying on the seat next to me, shivering violently along with the rest of me.

I forced my mind to somewhere warm in the vain hope that it would help. _Mind over matter. In theory._

First I tried somewhere in the old world. My hometown, Boston, in summer, stepping off the train at Downtown Crossing, latte in hand.

 _“It’s gone you know.”_

My eyes snapped open from my fantasy to find where the voice had come from.

A redheaded man sat in the driver’s seat, across from me. He was facing forward, but I could see his ear and jaw line – scruffy with unshaven stubble. It was a profile I would recognize anywhere. Party Poison had come back for me.

“You–”

 _“No. I didn’t.”_

“But you’re back…”

 _“Not really, Kick,”_ he sighed. _“Let’s face it, I’m probably curled up asleep right now in some wreck of a building, safe, waiting for my turn on night watch.”_

“Oh… So, why are _you_ here then?”

He finally turned to face me. His eyes reflected the moonlight that shone through the window gaps, his vibrant hair flew a little in the wind, his eyebrows and lips set in similar grim lines, and he was every bit the Poison that I’d run from not sixteen hours ago. But right then he was also the same Poison that I’d been fucking around with for the last week, the same Poison that had that tendency to lead us in and out of danger on a daily basis.

 _“I am here, little Killjoy, because you imagining your long lost home on the coast is not going to get you through the night.”_

The way his lips twitched and stretched as he talked was so accurate. It occurred to me I might have spent a little more time watching him that I’d admitted to myself before. That’s what the Zones would do to you though.

“It’s not gone,” I grumbled, even though I knew the truth: the entirety of the east coast of old America had crumbled and fallen into the Atlantic Ocean.

 _“You can’t go home,”_ he told me sternly, shifting to face me fully. _“Neither can I.”_

I couldn’t tell if that was a shred of latent information I’d forgotten I knew, or if it was just my hopes that I wouldn’t be alone when home was an option for those who still had one.

 _“God, look at you…”_ He continued, his eyes softening into sympathy. _“You’re freezing solid. You know that, right?”_

I laughed. I actually laughed. “Yeah, Poison, I did figure that one out for myself.”

He smiled down at me. That, I knew, was a memory of him. The one time I’d seen him smile like that it was directed at Kobra during one of their hushed conversations in the corner of an old clothing store in a fairly intact mall in Zone 2. It made more sense now that I knew they were brothers – it was the brothers having that conversation, not the Killjoys.

I wondered, for the first time, what their names used to be. What the names of the brothers were. Ghoul and Jet too.

“Can’t you help me?”

 _“Help you how?”_

“With the warmth issues?” He looked doubtful. “Look, you understand this better than anyone…”

I’d not mentioned that I knew about the siblings to either of them, never planned on it, but what harm could it be telling a hallucination?

 _“Understand what?”_ He shuffled in his seat, climbing back towards me.

“I have a brother.”

 _“No. You don’t,”_ he didn’t even flinch or pause his manoeuvres as he spoke, throwing himself onto the seat next to me; Ghoul’s usual place.

“I do. He’s in the Zones somewhere. I have to find him.”

Poison accepted my words with a shrug. _“You know I can hardly understand what you’re saying with all the teeth chattering.”_

Asshole. His words brought every ounce of my attention back to my shuddering body. It was actually lessening slightly, but that just meant my brain was slowing down enough to not bother with self-warming movements.

 _“Do you think that, if your brain is slowing down, time will seem faster?”_

I stared up at him, my vision beginning to blur. “What?” I asked, huddling down further into the corner and reaching up to take his hand, not sure what I would find.

He was just as cold as I was. _No use._

 _“Don’t worry,”_ he whispered. _“I don’t think it matters anymore.”_

My neck cracked painfully as I looked up at him, question written all over my face even though I could barely see him.

 _“You’re about to pass out.”_

*

 _“Kick? Kick Start? Hey, wake up… Kick?”_

 _“Is she even alive?”_

 _“This sounds a little familiar, doesn’t it?”_

I could hear the voices in my head and I knew two of them. The first was Poison; the last was Kobra; but the second, more distant voice I couldn’t place.

 _It’s familiar though, somehow._

 _“She’s alive… Just. Come on, Kick, wake up._ Wake up… Kick?”

Rough fingers pried my mask and scarf off and my eyes open and slapped at my face gently. In front of the mass of white that filled to the periphery of my vision, there was a dark smudge.

“Come back to us, girl.” The smudge moved as it talked – Poison.

“Or don’t.” Kobra muttered.

“Shut up, Kobra. You’ve got the water, right, Show?”

“Ah, yeah,” the unknown voice said brightly, moving closer. “Here… Holy shit.”

“What?” Both Killjoys asked simultaneously.

“Johnny?”

 _My brother?_

“Who’s Johnny?”

 _My brother!_

“He’s… Well… He’s…” There was another smudge in my vision now, a lighter coloured one, and it pointed at me.

“This,” Poison began. “Is Kick Start. The _girl_ we were telling you about. What the hell?”

The smudge called Show stuttered. “I– I mean yeah– of– of course… But…I just… Never mind.”

But he knew something about my brother so I had to try something.

“Poison?” My voice didn’t even make any noise, but my rasp and wheeze caught his attention and he pressed the bottle of water to my lips, running his palm gently over the side of my face.

“You know,” Kobra sneered as I gulped. “Next time you flip a shit and run away you should find you own fucking water. Or just don’t fucking come back.” With that, the Kobra blur stormed to the hood of the car, cracking it open to see the damage.

Poison sighed. “You okay?”

I nodded, not trusting my voice but feeling almost instantly stronger after the water and the feeling of the sun warming the ruined earth and my body.

*

“What are you doing?”

Understandable question considering I’d just undone and slipped my belt out of the loops in my jeans.

“It’s just the fan belt,” I called up from under the hood, fastening the piece of leather around the cold metal engine parts. “Easily fixed, but if it goes, she’ll overheat pretty quickly. We’re actually just lucky she didn’t burn anything out.” I slammed the hood down to see Kobra already sitting in the passenger seat, ready to go.

“Told you she was good with cars.” Poison said with his body pressed lightly to my side and a little pride in his tone to the boy – well, about my age really – roller-skating around the car.

“Oh, I believed you,” Show said, coming to a t-stop next to us. “It’s just been a long time since I’ve seen _her_ with tits.” My eyes snapped up to him. “It’s weird.”

I stared him down for a moment. “Ok, what’s going on?” I asked. “I don’t know you, but somehow you know me? And my brother? From when?”

“So… You don’t remember me at all?” I shook my head. “Ok this is going to be a shock then…”

Poison took my hand, seeing the confusion all over my face, and squeezed it a little, interrupting Show. “Let’s have this conversation on the way or when we get back shall we? Jet can’t look after those three for long.”

 _Three?_ something in the back of my mind asked.

I nodded, though. “Yeah, get in.” Just when I’d managed to get my mind working properly again, I was worried that this would be bad news and would have my brainwaves come to a grinding halt again.

I took Ghoul’s place while Show took up Jet’s and Poison grinned as the old car roared back to life.

Show finally removed his helmet – allowing me to notice the writing on his knuckles _“SHOW PONY”_ , drawn on, not tattooed like Ghoul’s – and looked at me, fascinated.

“Better Living really did a number on you… I knew they could make you think it was wrong… I didn’t know they could make you forget it all; remember something different.” My eyebrows narrowed, but urged him on. “You don’t have a brother, Kick. When I knew you, back in the old world, and I knew you quite well, you _were_ Johnny.”

He paused, gauging my reaction.

I didn’t have one.

“You’re mistaking me for someone.” I simply shook my head and turned back to Poison. “How’s Ghoul doing?”

He nodded to my question, indicating he was alive but not in great shape, but after a moment his eyes fixed on me in the rear view mirror with a sad smile.

I looked out the window, trying to stay calm while my mind raced a million miles an hour. _Could BL/ind make me forget my life? Make me remember something that never happened?_

Drawing my weapon and aiming out at the horizon, I knew I wouldn’t need to look far for that answer.

Of course they could.


End file.
